Your Legacy
by UnwieldyInk
Summary: "'Very good, Jason Grace,' Notus said. 'You are a son of Jupiter, yet you have chosen your own path- as all the greatest demigods have done before you. You cannot control your parentage, but you can choose your legacy.'" Day two for Jason week on tumblr! *TBM Spoilers*


"' _Very good, Jason Grace,' Notus said. 'You are a son of Jupiter, yet you have chosen your own path- as all the greatest demigods have done before you._ _ **You cannot control your parentage, but you**_ **can** _**choose your legacy**_ _.'"_

Jason Grace was a hero.

This was the phrase resting on everyone's lips as they watched the shroud burn. Percy kept his head bowed, taking comfort in Annabeth's presence next to him and the swirling mass of whispered 'hero'es around him.

That was the word they focused on the most. Hero.

It appeared in every speech, was present in every prayer, Percy thought he had even seen the latin word for it, _heros_ , scrawled in golden thread on the side of Jason's shroud.

The instant he and Annabeth had stepped into New Rome, they knew something was very, very wrong. It turned out they had arrived the day before his funeral. Most of the Romans wanted to give Jason a proper Roman burial; his coffin had been brought to them, after all, not to Camp Half-Blood. But Reyna insisted that he be buried the Greek way, the Camp Half-Blood way. He had made his choice, she said, and it was not to be with them. The least they could do was honor that choice.

As the flames began to lick at the gorgeous thread, full of golds, blues, and whites, something shifted inside Percy. Jason was a hero, yes.

"Ήρωας," he whispered.

But Jason was more than that.

"Φίλη."

Percy's personal self-reflection was cut short by someone new climbing onto the platform. Hazel gripped the sides of the podium, taking a deep breath before speaking.

"I've admired Jason ever since I arrived at Camp Jupiter," she began. "He seemed… almost otherworldly. A child of Jupiter. A leader. A friend that everyone listened to and adored. I couldn't find a single flaw about him." She swallowed, seemingly unable to look at the fire slowly moving towards Jason's body.

"And then- And then I got to know him better. I found out that my previous idea of him wasn't true at all. He wasn't perfect. He wasn't flawless. He was human." She interrupted herself with a shaky breath, closing her eyes for a minute. "I know we're all here praising what a hero he was, what a good leader he was, but… there was more to him than that. He made his choice. He didn't want to be- just another child of Jupiter, another Hercules-type to die and only be remembered for the number of monsters he killed. We need to remember him for what he was. An incredibly brave person. A passionately loyal friend. A kid who was trying to do his best for the world around him."

She opened her eyes to look at the silent faces of the crowd. Tears that Hazel had until now controlled now welled up in her eyes. "I don't know. I don't know. It just feels wrong to ignore that part of him, when it's the only part of himself he seemed to care about." She quickly turned and hurried off of the stage, clearly worried by the silence, thinking she'd offended someone.

But when Reyna came back up to the podium, she said simply: "Hazel is right."

After that, the whole nature of the ceremony changed. All of the speeches weren't about a time when Jason saved someone's life or gave an incredible pep talk before a battle, they were about the time when he snuck out of camp at 3AM because they were out of his favorite ice cream, the day when he discovered his powers by literally falling off of a building and somehow not hitting the ground, the time when he took on someone's chores so that they could spend the whole day in bed with some netflix and ice cream after a bad breakup.

The word 'hero' was on few lips. Instead, now, the words floating around in the crowd were friend, kid, smile, kind, help. Jason was, unequivocally, a good person. That was all that mattered. Everyone felt that.

Percy felt that, too, when Annabeth turned to him and met his eyes. Her eyes were shining with tears, but she was grinning.

Percy found that he was grinning, too.


End file.
